'MO - June 2008 - (Page 10)

community PET PROJECT Dream A Little Dream of Me By Julie Forbes Every once in a while I dream about my dogs. Most of the time the dream is very intense, upsetting, emotionally taxing and leaves me exhausted when I wake up because the feelings are so real; as if the dream happened. A couple of weeks ago I dreamt that I found my ten-year-old shepherd mix with some of his internal organs hanging out of his abdomen. “I need to take him to the hospital!” I immediately thought. Next scene: The vet was examining him, and suddenly the machines alerted the doctor that Chewy was about to die. She told me he was going to die soon. So, I rushed to his side. Chewy then lifted his head and told me, in plain English and with some urgency and sadness, that he was leaving me. “Thank you for taking such good care of me,” he said. Then he died. During the rest of the dream—which felt to me like it lasted several hours, I cried. I screamed and wept, for a long time. It’s no wonder I woke up feeling tired! The dream was so intense I even felt strange when I looked at him the following day. The realm of dreamland and my awakened reality seemed to be ﬂirting with each other. I asked some of my friends if they dream about their pets and if so, about what? Interestingly enough, most of the people I talked to said, when they dream about their pets the dream is upsetting in nature and something dangerous is happening. One friend said she dreamt that her dogs fell off a high bridge into rushing dark waters below and her dogs were swept away as she screamed for them. Another friend said of his pet dreams, “Most of the dreams have centered around him being killed in some sort of accident: a car hits him, or he jumps into busy trafﬁc from the window of my moving car—that sort of thing. I usually wake up feeling guilty.” I am intrigued by the level of intensity and the occurrence of some sort of trauma to the pet and the impact that has on us. One way to look at it is that our pets represent some part of ourselves, a vulnerable part, maybe us as children, and we are working through some stress when we dream of our pets getting hurt while in our care. An interesting suggestion is to put yourself in the role of the pet, in the dream. When I did this I got a whole differ- ent perspective on what I might be working through when I dream of my dog being harmed. Putting myself in his paws during the dream, I could immediately identify with how HE was acting and what his experience was, especially if I imagined myself as a child. My relationship with my pets is one of my most intimate relationships—day-in and day-out, every day for more than a decade. It makes sense to me that when I dream of them I can feel extremely vulnerable and it strikes a chord deep inside me that continues to resonate days after the dream itself. When we are awake, do we care for our pets as if they are our childhood selves? Are we trying to make up for, in our care for them, what we subconsciously feel was missing in the care we received as dependent children? I’ll try not to psychoanalyze myself too much, but all ﬁngers point, once again, to the fact that my dogs are precious to me and I hope that whatever emotional baggage I do spill onto them, in the end they would still thank me for taking such good care of them, and that their souls would rest in peace. They’ve certainly earned it. Julie is a graduate of the University of Vermont with a B.S. in Animal Science. Find her on the Web at www.SenstiveDog.com. www.urbanbeast-seattle.com 217 YALE AVENUE NORTH, SEAT TLE, WA 98109 10 celebrating seattle’s gay community http://www.SenstiveDog.com http://www.urbanbeast-seattle.com/

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of 'MO - June 2008

'MO Seattle - June 2008 Contents Letter From The Editor Voices Instant Activist Pet Project: Do You Dream About Your Pet? ’mo-BIZ: Anne Levison, Co-owner of the Seattle Storm Legally Speaking: Real Estate Buying Basics The Things We Do: Getting “Out”doors this Summer Seattle Pride Events Calendar ’mo Magazine Interview with Sandra Bernhard Anatomy of a Myth Form & Function: Turn Up the Heat on Your Triceps Gay City: National HIV Testing Day San Francisco: If Gay Had a Headquarters Book Review: Chronicle of a Plague, Revisited by Andrew Holleran Augusten Burroughs Coming to Showtime Network Sex and the City Romances the Big Screen SceneOut: People@Places Capitol Hill Guide

'MO - June 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.